Seductive as Flame

by Susan Johnson

  “He died a week later without fully regaining consciousness. Had the scandal surfaced, it might have killed Mother. She was still very weak.” He shrugged. “Although Creiggy thinks otherwise. I’m not so sure. But Mother’d suffered enough at my father’s hands. She didn’t need this final insult.” By that time, too, he’d begun to suspect who was to blame for his mother’s illness. Not that he was about to bare his soul on that account. “And if I’d been inclined to question my father’s swaggering disclosure,” he added, his mild tone tempered by the intervening years, “Julia was born six months later, weighed eight pounds, and was unmistakably a Dalgliesh.”

  “She is—very much so,” Zelda murmured.

  “She’s also a darling. It’s not her fault she came into the world the way she did. John and Lily have been wonderful to her.”

  “Your mother doesn’t know?” Surprise and anxiety tempered her query.

  He shook his head. “That was Violetta’s trump card. She knew I didn’t want Mother hurt. But I’m going to have to explain it all to Mother now that I’ve begun divorce proceedings. I was going to tell you that I talked to a barrister once I had more definitive news. In any event, Mother will have to be informed about the divorce and about Julia.” He grimaced. “Somehow. Creiggy seems to think Mother’s stronger than she looks. I hope she’s right because the scandal’s going to be horrendous.”

  “Creiggy knows?”

  “Everyone at the house knows.”

  “And yet they’ve kept your secret?”

  “Because of Mother. They worship her.”

  “Lord, Alec. This is all very confusing and, honestly, unsettling. I’m not sure what to do.” Should she believe him? Was he truly divorcing Violetta? Would he actually marry her if he did? A man like Dalgliesh, no matter that he professed devotion, didn’t have a record for constancy.

  “Give me time to resolve this mess. The barrister, Fitzwilliam, is first rate, Fulton tells me. He’ll see to my divorce, then we’ll be married.” Alec thought about taking Zelda’s hand but decided against it. “It shouldn’t take too long.”

  “Violetta’s going to fight a divorce,” Zelda said, interested in his answer, turning so she could watch his face. For all she knew he could have asked any number of women to marry him before her.

  “She can’t.”

  An open, direct look and an unexpected answer. “Why not?”

  “Let me rephrase that. Ultimately, she can’t prevail.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “Very.”

  “But you’re not going to tell me why.”

  “I’d rather not.” He blew out a breath, then quietly said, “I’d like you to trust me on this. I know it’s asking a lot, considering this unholy mess, but if you would, I’d be grateful.” Only a handful of people knew the entire truth. He’d like to keep it that way for his mother’s sake. “There’s going to be scandal enough with the divorce. I’m trying to minimize the humiliation. Not for me. I don’t care. But for all the others,” he quietly said.

  He looked so afflicted she didn’t have the heart to insist.

  When he spoke of humiliation, he meant his mother, of course, and Chris and Julia as well, she suspected. A love child faced censure even with Alec’s wealth. “Of course, I’ll trust you. How could I not?” She loved him.

  Taking a chance she wouldn’t rebuff him, he gently grasped her hand and felt both relief and pleasure when she gave him a sidelong smile dappled by sunlight. “I’ll make this up to you. Fitzwilliam assures me quick success in court.” He hadn’t, but then he didn’t know what Dalgliesh knew. “Although,” Alec added with a small frown, “you know the divorce proceedings will be in all the papers. I suggest you don’t read them.” He sighed. “Christ, I’m going to have to warn Mother about that, too.”

  “At least my family won’t care. They’re scandal proof. You haven’t met my brothers,” Zelda noted. “Three rakish young bucks who like their whiskey can cause a great deal of trouble, and Duncan looks to be following in their footsteps in Edinburgh.”

  Alec laughed. “Good, one less problem. Look, why don’t we go into town and pick out an engagement ring? It would give me hope that in the fullness of time I’ll have my life back. And I’d love to show you off.”

  “God no,” Zelda said aghast. “Not London. I’d be horribly embarrassed.”

  “Then we’ll go to Paris for a ring,” he suggested. “Just as soon as the imbeciles in South Africa are restrained.”

  She smiled. “When will that be?”

  He visibly relaxed at the sweetness of her smile. “Not soon enough unfortunately,” he said, his answering smile warm with affection. “Why don’t we have a jeweler bring out a selection instead.”

  “Because gossip would probably precede him, that’s why.”

  He quirked one brow. “Since when have you cared about gossip?”

  “Since I found myself in your exalted sphere,” she replied. “I led quite an uneventful life before I met you.”

  “If only my life were exalted,” he muttered. “Far from it. Welcome to my version of hell.”

  A prescient comment as it turned out.

  CHAPTER 24

  ZELDA COULDN’T QUITE envision any version of hell at the moment.

  She was content, happy, her jealousy assuaged. In fact she was feeling guilty for suspecting the worst of Alec when he was instead taking the time to care for a child that wasn’t even his. And doing it despite the absolutely punishing schedule he was under.

  He saw Julia every day when he was home, he’d said. When he was away from Munro Park, he sent the little girl notes and presents. Zelda already knew how thoughtful he was of Chris and his mother. As for herself, he was ungrudgingly benevolent in his attentions.

  “I feel terrible,” she said, glancing at him as they traveled down the woodland path hand in hand. “I’m selfishly taking up a great deal of your time when you have so many other pressing matters needing your attention. I do apologize.”

  “I want you to take my time.” He smiled. “Seeing you is my gift to myself. As for this crisis”—he shrugged faintly—“things should break soon.”

  She wanted to say, Which crisis? The list was long. Instead, she said, “Maybe you should delay your divorce. You’d have one less problem right now, and everything’s fine the way it is as far as I’m concerned,” she said with a good-natured smile. “Really.”

  He looked puzzled and less than amiable. “You want me to delay my divorce?”

  “No, I don’t want you to. It was just a suggestion. You’re so incredibly busy now, working eighteen to twenty hours a day, that I thought—”

  He was scowling now. “I don’t like your suggestion.”

  “You’re angry. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not angry. Surprised that’s all.”

  “Because no woman has ever gainsaid you, I suppose,” she testily said. “How very nice that must be.”

  “Now you’re angry.”

  Her nose twitched, charmingly, he thought, and then she said, “No—not angry so much as, well—dubious. The truth is that I don’t actually believe you mean to divorce. What do you think of that?”

  “I don’t blame you. I hardly believe it myself.”

  “There. You see.”

  She tried to pull her hand away, but he wouldn’t let her. “You misunderstand, darling,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “What’s unbelievable is that almost from the first I’ve been obsessed with everything about you, how you look, how you smile, how you sometimes”—he paused, thinking of how she’d held him off at first—“care what the world thinks even when you say you don’t. I’ve wanted a child with you almost from the first, too. You know that because I told you even in the midst of that crowd in the kitchen.” He finally smiled his beautiful smile that could bring a corpse to life or charm even the most dubious doubting Thomas. “Darling, consider, we’re having sex day and night. I’m just being practical. Waiting to divorce might not be
an option.”

  “Oh Lord, don’t say that.”

  “Jesus, Zelda, don’t tell me you need a lecture on the birds and the bees.”

  “Of course not. If you must know, the real, real truth is that I’m afraid I might lose you in all the slander and destruction of a divorce.” She wasn’t so sure he could withstand the storm of public scrutiny when he’d been guarded about his private life so long. She took a small breath before going on, not sure she wished to bare her soul to a man who had, to date, only toyed with women. “You see,” she slowly began, her emancipated psyche reluctant to cede the field, “I think, in the end, you might decide it’s not worth the long, difficult, embarrassing process. Your entire life will be open to cross-examination in court and in the papers. You don’t have to do this for me. Even a child isn’t an issue where I live.”

  In the past he would have smoothly accepted her offer, made promises he’d never keep. But now he meant every word. “You won’t lose me,” he said. “Not now, not ever. And don’t worry about me in court.” He assumed that he was paying Fitzwilliam to keep him out of court in any event. But there was no guarantee there, so he didn’t offer false hope. “I want to marry you, my dubious darling. I want you to have my children. I want us to live together ’til the end of time.” Raw feeling, fierce and passionate, shone in his eyes. “I love you.” His smile was achingly sweet. “I always shall.”

  She wished she’d known him as a boy when he smiled like that. She would have loved him then, too. “Oh good, and thank you,” she said on a soft breath of joyful relief, the ferocious sense of fear that had threatened to crush her routed. He didn’t ask her if she loved him, but she wasn’t jealous anymore of all the women who had. “I love you, too, you know.”

  He smiled. “I know. And as soon as we get back home, I’ll show just how much I love you.”

  She grinned. “What a lovely thought. Forgive me for being so fainthearted. It’s quite unlike me. I have no explanation.”

  “I believe it’s called love, darling.” He winked in a disarmingly seductive way. “Don’t expect logic.”

  Her senses began to warm as they always did when he looked at her like that. “I might have other expectations, however,” she murmured, her voice sultry and low.

  “Don’t you always,” he said as softly, his gaze taking on a predatory gleam. “It’s one of your most—” He glimpsed a flash of light high in a tree where it shouldn’t have been and was already slamming Zelda to the ground when the crack of a rifle shot rang out. Tumbling after her, he fired two quick rounds from a small revolver he jerked from his pocket. As they hit the ground, he covered her body with his and hoped like hell his men had heard the commotion.

  Three distant shots came in answer. Good. Better odds.

  Hoping his men’s signal shots had momentarily distracted their assailant, Alec leaped to his feet, scooped up Zelda, and dashed headlong for a nearby pine thicket. Two more shots whined past them before they reached shelter, the last so close it stirred the air in passing.

  Alec dropped Zelda on the ground, crisply ordered, “Don’t move,” and swung back to give chase.

  Paralyzed with shock, Zelda couldn’t have moved if she wished. She didn’t even flinch at the loud, close, rapid-fire shots as Alec emptied his revolver at the distant, fleeing figure.

  Coming to a stop a dozen yards down the path, the earl softly swore in several languages. The man had disappeared. Not that his target had been within revolver range. Nor could he continue to give chase and leave Zelda unguarded. No question, though, he would have to see that she was better protected, more to the point, perhaps, that Violetta was more closely watched. It wouldn’t happen again, he grimly thought.

  Shoving his revolver back in his coat pocket, retracing his steps, he debated what best to tell Zelda. The truth wouldn’t serve. You were the target, not me, required explanations he wasn’t yet willing to supply. Perhaps never if he had his way.

  Finding Zelda huddled pale and shaken on the ground where he’d left her, he lifted her to her feet, drew her into his embrace, and began with an apology. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he murmured. “It’s over now. You’re safe.” But beneath the tranquility of his tone, a simmering anger seethed. What the hell did he have guards for? No unauthorized person should have been within a mile of the estate. “If it’s my gamekeeper being stupid, I’ll have his head,” he said. “Creiggy’s been telling me Wilson needs glasses.”

  Zelda looked up, her gaze incredulous. “This was some mistake?”

  “It had to have been. These things don’t happen at Munro Park.”

  “You shot back though.” Another shock—his lightning-swift reaction as they’d hurtled to the ground. “Why do you carry a weapon?”

  “It’s a habit in the country.” Only a partial lie. “And I shot to scare the damned fool. I have men patrolling the estate,” he mentioned in a kind of incidental aside. “They’ll find him.”

  She was startled. “Men patrolling? Why haven’t I seen them?”

  For good reason. “I suppose because there’s only a few.” Another lie, but so much was at Munro Park. Since his mother’s illness, the estate had been well defended. “They’re primarily a deterrent to Violetta. She and Mother don’t get along,” he said elliptically. “If I’m home, Violetta’s welcome in the Dower House. Otherwise not.” He shrugged faintly. “It’s a long-standing arrangement like everything else in our marriage.”

  “My Lord, Alec,” Zelda said, astonished he had guards to keep his wife at bay. “What a tangled mess. I marvel at your charity. How do you do it?”

  He was more than willing to shift the conversation from the shooting, even if the alternative was his noxious marriage. “An arrangement like mine isn’t so uncommon,” he said, suppressing the old bottled rage automatically now after so long. “I know any number of men who’ve entered marriages of convenience.” He didn’t say noblemen weren’t required to be faithful, nor that it made marriages like his bearable. “And if you think Chris is sweet now,” he said with a fleeting smile, “you should have seen him at two.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “One learns to cope,” he said.

  “By amusing yourself in other ladies’ beds.”

  “Not anymore.” There was no point arguing about the past. “You can have that in writing if you want.”

  “I just might. If nothing else, I could blackmail you with such a promise,” she lightly noted. “I doubt you’d like your reputation for vice besmirched.”

  He smiled. “You must be feeling better. And for your information, I no longer have a reputation for vice.”

  Her brows lifted in amused delight. “Is that so.”

  “It is. I intend to be a model husband, attentive to my wife and marriage vows.”

  “Must I learn to be a model wife?” she playfully inquired.

  He shook his head. “You’re perfect.” Of that he was certain after screwing his way around the world the last ten years. His chin lifted. “Hear that? My men are close.” Running footsteps were audible. “And I expect Wilson will have some reasonable explanation for this monstrous mistake.”

  Zelda brushed his chin with her fingertip. “You were very chivalrous to shield me with your body. I thought it exceedingly romantic.”

  “I’ll be happy to cover you with my body again,” the earl sportively offered. “Hopefully soon.” Although this incident presaged the end of Zelda’s stay at Munro Park. He’d have her escorted home tomorrow.

  “How soon?” she whispered.

  His smile was warm, tantalizing. “Just as soon as I get rid of my men.” But he was already making plans to pay Violetta a visit as soon as Zelda was gone. Apparently, his wife didn’t understand she was no longer in a position of power.

  He’d have to make that clear.

  When the party of armed men reached them a moment later, Dalgliesh casually addressed his lieutenant. “Someone will have to tell Wilson to do his shooting somewhere else next t
ime.”

  Jed Green, who’d known Alec from childhood, picked up the cue. “I’ll speak to Wilson,” he said. Although he knew as well as Alec, if Wilson wanted to shoot someone, he wouldn’t miss. “It must have been a real fright for the lady.”

  “Perhaps just a little,” Zelda admitted. “But I’m fine now.”

  “Back to the house then, darling?” Alec’s gaze met Jed’s for a second before he turned his smile on Zelda and held out his arm.

  In the guise of a bantering conversation between Alec and his men, the six guards casually positioned themselves to protect their patron and his lady on the return to the Dower House.

  Dalgliesh nodded at Jed as they reached the house. “If I might see you later,” he said. “You can tell me what Wilson said.”

  “Very good, sir. Anytime.”

  It was an unpleasant meeting when Dalgliesh met with his men fifteen minutes later in the armory. He’d excused himself from breakfast, pleading work. Understanding the full extent of his obligations, Zelda had graciously sent him off.

  Alec was feeling far less gracious. “Someone should be whipped,” he growled, taking his seat at the head of the table and glaring at his men. “Miss MacKenzie was almost killed. How the hell did it happen!”

  “From what I can gather, boss,” Jed said, “one of the jockeys who comes here regularly disappeared right quick after the shooting. Since he was vetted, no one thought to question him.”

  “Who?”

  “Cummings, sir.”

  “Find him. Bring him to me.”